Dionysius I, also called Dionysius the Elder (born c. 430 bc—died 367) tyrant of Syracuse from 405 who, by his conquests in Sicily and southern Italy, made Syracuse the most powerful Greek city west of mainland Greece. Although he saved Greek Sicily from conquest by Carthage, his brutal military despotism harmed the cause of Hellenism.

After working as a clerk in a public office, Dionysius distinguished himself fighting in the war with Carthage that broke out in Sicily in 409. He took advantage of a crisis in the war to make himself tyrant in 405. Over the next eight years he ruthlessly consolidated and expanded his power. He built a wall around Syracuse and fortified Epipolae. The Greek citizens of Naxos, Catana, and Leontini were removed from their cities; many of them were enslaved and their homes were given to Sicilian and Italian mercenaries.

Dionysius was then ready to lead his vast army against Carthage, which had occupied western and southern Sicily. His first war with Carthage (397–396), during which the Greeks besieged Motya and the Carthaginians Syracuse, ended with a notable victory for Dionysius, who confined his enemy’s power to an area of northwest Sicily. A second conflict ended in 392 with a treaty advantageous to Dionysius. After 390 he led an expedition against Rhegium and other Greek cities of southern Italy, and with the aid of the Lucanians he devastated the territories of Thurii, Croton, and Locri. By the time Rhegium fell (386), Dionysius had become the chief power in Greek Italy. He sent colonists to Illyria and possibly to northeast Italy. Although the Athenian writer Isocrates hailed him as a champion of Hellenism, the brutality of Dionysius’ conquests made him unpopular in Greece, and his literary pretensions were deplored. When he sent a splendid embassy to the Olympic festival of 388, a crowd pillaged the tents of his envoys.

Dionysius’ third war with Carthage (383–c. 375) proved disastrous; he suffered a crushing defeat at Cronium and was forced to pay an indemnity of 1,000 talents and cede the territory west of the Halycus River. Nevertheless, he was engaged in yet another conflict with the Carthaginians at the time of his death.

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Dionysius I of Syracuse (c. 430–367) can be seen as a transitional figure between the 5th century and the 4th and indeed between Classical and Hellenistic Greece. His career began in 405, after the seven troubled years in Sicily that followed the Athenian surrender in 413. For most of this period there was war with Carthage in North Africa, and there were internal convulsions that...

The invention of mechanical artillery was ascribed traditionally to the initiative of Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, in Sicily, who in 399 bc directed his engineers to construct military engines in preparation for war with Carthage. Dionysius’ engineers surely drew on existing practice. The earliest of the Greek engines was the gastrophetes, or “belly shooter.” In effect...

A few years later Sicily faced a Carthaginian resurgence. But Syracuse was saved from the fate that overtook Acragas and other Sicilian cities by its general, Dionysius I, who obtained autocratic power in 405 and ruled Syracuse as its tyrant until 367. Dionysius fought three wars against the Carthaginians, confining their territorial dominions to the western part of Sicily, and he extended...